Excuse my absence, everyone! It’s been one extreme, stressful run to the finish line of my second semester at college, but it’s currently Summer Break and I am FREEEEE! Now it’s time to return back to the lives of my favorite high school boys (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

When a Christmas Eve DVD party goes awry, the boys decide to rent more movies and hit up purikuri along the way. They end up spotting Azuma-sensei and his friend, Akira, who cut in front of Chizuru at the cultural festival. After the two leave, the boys spot a girl who’s balloon is stuck in a Christmas tree. Chizuru tries to bring it down for her, but upon seeing Akira dressed as Santa Claus, Chizuru loses his balance and falls on the Christmas tree, knocking it over. The boys are then forced to work alongside Akira wearing the most adorable Santa Claus type outfits, helping out around the event and solving a ‘candy’ mystery at the end.

Episode four focuses on the twins and how their different personalities occasionally clash when trying to clean the house for the new year. The two even get into an argument when Yuta accidentally spills water on Yuki’s manga when trying to clean, which makes Yuki go over to Kaname’s house. After telling Kaname that Yuki doesn’t have to come home, Yuta discovers an old map they drew as kids and follows it to a buried broken plate. He ends up coming over to get Yuki, who goes willingly. Yuta has let Yuki off this time as he remembers that as kids, Yuki helped him hide the plate he accidentally broke one evening.

The New Years celebration/trouble continues onto episode five when the boys head off to a shrine. Along the way, Chizuru finds a bike key and decides to keep it safe until they find the owner. However, when Shun finds the owner, Chizuru has already accidentally thrown it into the offering box instead of his 100 yen coin. The guy, Akihiro, makes them carry his bike to cram school, slowly revealing pieces of his life to them as they walk. Along the way, they pick up New Years greeting cards; one of which the boys are going to send to Akihiro with good wishes that he will go into the university of his choice, and the other one to Akihiro’s girlfriend. Luckily, they manage to get it to the mailman, but Akikihiro ends up missing cram school. In the end, after he leaves with his bike, the boys do a last minute prayer before the sun goes down.

Episode six features the reappearance of Kayo, the cafeteria lady’s daughter, and sticker collecting. However it seem she won’t be sticking around for long as Kayo reveals that she’s quitting her job at the end of the week to work back at a salon. Yuki becomes silently troubled over her leaving and doesn’t even eat in the cafeteria anymore, which Kayo notices. Throughout the week though, Yuki has been eating bread and collecting stickers, leaving him with only four points left on Kayo’s last day. To get them, he makes a quick deal with the guy who’s been trying to recruit him to the basketball club and obviously wins the stickers from him. He ends up giving the plate to Kayo before she leaves, telling her to use it at least once…

It’s Valentine’s Day in episode seven, which means the love triangle is running fully into action. Masaki has already spent nights making truffles for Shun while Chizuru hopes that maybe Masaki will give him something too. After school, just as Masaki gets the courage to give him the chocolates, Shun receives a homemade chocolate tart and gets asked out from a girl at another school. Of course, Chizuru notices Masaki, who’s seen the whole thing, and chases after her. She ends up collapsing from exhaustion, but not before scarfing down the chocolates she made, worrying that they don’t taste good.

As soon as she wakes up at the infirmary, Masaki begins crying over the fact she wasn’t able to give Shun chocolates. Chizuru, who’s been waiting for her in the infirmary, tries to comfort her, even spontaneously giving her a long embrace. He gets so shocked by what he’s done that he runs away, lamenting over it until the next day. Chizuru ends up following Shun after school as he visits the school of the girl who confessed to him, then to the park where the two begin to talk. Masaki catches him just as they overhear Shun turn the girl down. The two walk home with Masaki admitting to herself that she always believed Shun would accept her feelings, but seeing one girl being turned down, she now starts to think maybe he won’t. Chizuru again tries to try her up, and as the two trying making an eye shape with their shadows, he tells her that he likes her. Masaki gets flustered and walks away, Chizuru following with a smile on his face~.

Oh boy, where to BEGIN? First of all, episode seven is without a doubt the best episode this season, for me at least. There were so many awesome, unexpected surprises, such as Shun being asked out by a girl to Chizuru hugging Masaki to Chizuru ACTUALLY saying OUTLOUD that he liked Masaki! It was the ultimate squeal-worthy episode after the Santa suits and Christmas shenanigans in episode three. I was totally caught off-guard with Shun being asked out. Poor thing looked so lost! I liked that something romantic-ish happened with him since it’s happened to everyone else. I was waiting for something like that for so long you don’t even knooooow. Yuki figuring out Chizuru likes Mary also kind of caught me off guard; then again, they are a close duo. It seemed inevitable. As for Chizuru, he definitely took it up a notch with Masaki. There were FINALLY some non-bittersweet moments between the two! Also, the whole opening dream scene in episode seven was too hilarious. It definitely burst a little bubble of innocence, which is cool; I didn’t expect them to keep the show so innocent.

Episode five wasn’t as much of a fangirly fun episode, but I did manage to let out a few laughs with the whole greeting card fiasco. I ended up finding myself relating to Akihiro (except you know, I don’t have a girlfriend) and I completely understood his thoughts. After high school, everything is just so uncertain. You can have a plan, but there’s such a low guarantee on that plan it makes you scared; scared you won’t be able to follow that plan, scared you won’t be able to do what you want to do. It gets frustrating and you can’t help but fall into this…stale mood. You get so focused on trying to make certain that your plan goes through that you forget about other things, like having fun and going out, and in Akihiro’s case, spending time with his girlfriend. Yet even though there’s so much scary uncertainty, all you can do is, as Akihiro said, keep running. My favorite quote from the whole episode was in fact, “I have to keep running, even if I don’t know why.” Poor Akihiro tried warning the boys about their next winter not being so carefree, but they seemed not to worry about it, except for Shun. Because he’s the sort of mediator/harmony of the group, I can tell he will try his best to keep everyone together through that difficult time.

It was nice to have episodes that focused more on Yuki and Yuta’s relationship. Those two (and twins in general) have always been interesting to me, so I grew a soft spot for episodes four and six. I could connect to the sibling love and hate in episode four with my own sister. We’re totally different in the same way Yuki and Yuta are (I’m the clean one, heh), but even though I desire to have my space to do what I want without her interference, I know I’d still miss her and probably come running back. Siblings, whether they be twins or years apart from each other, all (hopefully) have this unconscious bond that no matter what differences they may have, they will stick by each other and miss the other when it comes to goodbyes. With Yuki and Yuta that was shown in the broken plate incident, where despite their arguments and differences, they came together in each others time of need.

Episode six was another golden moment for the two, especially Yuki. It was cute to see his growing interest in Kayo. You could tell he was nervous as he hasn’t had any experience with liking someone before. I believe this episode showed how Yuki moved just a tiny bit more towards maturity by experiencing having an interest in a woman and actually working to give her a gift. Yuta, who’s definitely the more mature brother, could tell this would change him, and at the end, he seemed to wish Yuki a beautiful path to maturity. There were also tiny hints of Yuta trying to help Yuki with his situation with Kayo by distracting Chizuru so he could talk with her and waiting while he bought point bread at the convenience store. Their subtle bromance moments just tug at my HEART…

Anyway, now that Chizuru has sort of confessed to Masaki, will things ACTUALLY progress now? Knowing how this show works though, I doubt anything will happen anytime soon or that things will work out in the way I want, such as them being a couple. This show isn’t about extremes. But hey, I can still have hope right…? (Also, sorry for the rambling!)~

Preview:

Next in line of reappearances is Fuyuki, Shun’s younger brother, and his girlfriend! What sort of possible troubles are they having now, or are they just back for a casual visit? Until next week then~!!

This series it gives me so many feels after every episode! Especially the romance themed ones, but there was a bit about the twins that made me think of me any my own brother minus the falling on top of each other lol…I was like OMG that is so us! Yeah I watch this with my brother and were addicted.